Category Archives: Classic Monster Movies

EVERYONE WINS WITH THIS SUMMER’S SUNDAY NIGHT MOVIES

Beginning May 27, COMET will be airing a double-header of classic monster movies every Sunday throughout the summer, with the first film each night featuring your favorite giant lizard and the second starring some lesser-known beasts. The Godzilla films featured run the gamut from his 1954 debut Gojira, to the campy Son of Godzilla, to the monster mash of Destroy All Monsters. As for the other monsters featured, you can look forward to campy classics like the King Kong/Frankenstein hybrid Konga, the Korean Godzilla equivalent Yongary, Monster from the Deep, and the legendary Reptilicus.

MONSTERSUMMER Line-Up
Sundays 8/7C

5/27Gojira Reptilicus

6/3Godzilla: King of the MonstersPhantom from 10,000 Leagues

6/10Godzilla vs. Monster ZeroCreature of Destruction

6/17Terror of MechagodzillaThe Beast from Haunted Cave

6/24Godzilla vs. MechagodzillaYongary, Monster From The Deep

7/1Destroy All MonstersDestroy All Planets

7/8Son of GodzillaKonga

7/15Godzilla vs. MegalonWar of the Gargantuas

7/22GojiraAttack of the Monsters

7/29Destroy all MonstersMonster from a Prehistoric Planet

8/5Godzilla: King of the MonstersMonster from the Surf

8/12Godzilla vs. Monster ZeroIt’s Alive!

8/19Terror of MechagodzillaVoyage into Space

8/26Godzilla vs. MechagodzillaThe Giant Gila Monster

9/2Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla IIThe Giant Claw

COMET TV is available over the air, on cable, streaming for free online and now on ROKU and APPLE TV! Visit the COMET Schedule for more info.

Monster Summer Prize Pack

Many of you know that I have a partnership with Comet TV and they send me free stuff from time to time to share with you guys. Since I don’t have enough to give to everyone, I have to come up with creative ways for you to earn it!

The CometTV Monster Summer Prize Pack includes:

1 – Limited Edition Monster Summer Beach Towel: Only available via this promotion, catch Godzilla having a blast with one of two designs. You’ll be the envy of your friends and have some extra protection if a monster comes from the depths to destroy the planet. Score!

1 – COMETTV Monster Summer SPF Pouch: Beat the rays with this Monster Summer SPF pouch. Apply liberally to ward off the sun, The Beast from the Haunted Cave, Rodan or any other variety of lizard-like beast.

1- COMETTV Cooler: Listen, even Godzilla needs a place to keep his brews chill. Let’s be honest, he needs to beat the heat at some point. I can see him carrying this cool-as-fire bag around to crack open a cold one.

1 – COMETTV Monster Summer Beach-Tastic Ball: Are you a ball-er? I hope so, cause you need to grab some buds, jump in the pool and play with this Godzilla Monster Summer Beach Ball. Groovy!

2 – Exclusive COMETTV Film Cards: See what COMETTV has this month, with these collector’s cards. Perfect for the Godzilla fan, the Monster-man, or the COMETTV junkie if your life!

HOW TO ENTER:

We’ve made it really easy to enter to win this month’s giveaway from our friends at COMET. To enter, complete any of the following actions by 12PM Central Standard Time June , 2018.

That’s it! Lots of ways to enter and help us spread the word. Good luck and happy watching! Happy Monster Summer, Monster Kids!

BECAUSE…LAWYERS:

Entries must be submitted by June 19, 2018 at 12PM CST. This contest is only open to residents of the United States. No international entries will be accepted. Winner(s) will be chosen randomly from valid entries and will be notified by email, so make certain you can receive email from CollectingClassicMonsters.com . You must respond within 48 hours to claim the prize. The prize will be sent via FedEx or USPS. No P.O. Boxes, please. Please allow 2-4 weeks for delivery of your prize pack. Only one entrant per household. If you have won the same prize on another blog, you will not be eligible to win it again. Winner is subject to eligibility verification. Void where prohibited.

Any personal information you supply to us upon entering this contest will not be shared with any outside parties, except in the case when an outside party is handling prize fulfillment. In that instance, the prize winner(s) mailing information will be provided to the fulfillment team.

Disclosure: I received a free or greatly discounted product for the purpose of this review. The opinions are 100% mine. I have not been influenced in any way and I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with Federal Trade Commissions 16 CFR, Part 255 Guides Concerning the use of Endorsements and Testimonials In Advertising. Questions or concerns please contact me at george@collectingclassicmonsters.com

Christopher R Mihm’s Latest Film Premieres October 4 in Minneapolis

Growing up, I loved rainy Saturday afternoons. That often meant my parents would let me watch TV beyond my usual Saturday morning cartoon overdose, which was great because it also meant monster movies and other campy, fun genre fare. Usually, Saturday afternoon TV featured a 1960s Japanese giant monster movie like Godzilla followed by an older black-and-white science fiction, mystery or horror flick that I had read about in my monster movie magazines but rarely got the chance to actually see. Growing up before the digital age, before even the VHS era, meant calendar TV viewing. If you missed the movie, chances were slim you’d get another chance to see it for years.

Those childhood days are long gone of course, and Hollywood now uses focus groups to create blockbusters for an international audience to maximize ROI. Thats’ fine. Geeks have really never had it so good when it comes to entertainment made for us. But I still love my low-budget, black-and-white B-movie monsters from the 1950s and 60s. They made me nervous, and sometimes they even scared me, but mostly they made me excited and they provided good old fashioned escapism.

That’s exactly the kind of movie Minnesota filmmaker Christopher R Mihm loves to make. He calls them “new-old” movies and he’s been prolifically writing, directing and releasing a film a year for over a decade. All of his films are loosely interlinked feature-length movies which pay homage to 1950s-era “drive-in cinema.” Based in Minnesota, like your truly, Mihm has been prolific in his film making efforts, releasing a film a year for over a decade. DEMON is his 12th feature length film in as many years!

Always black-and-white and produced on a shoe string budget, these movies are a direct homage to the wonderful drive-in movies of the 1950s and 60s that I loved to watch on Saturday afternoon as a kid in the 1970s and Chris grew up watching on VHS with his dad in the 1980s. To be clear, Mihm’s movies have a deep respect for those campy cult classics and while his movies are often funny and tounge-in-cheek, this isn’t Mystery Science Theater. Nostalgia is powerful stuff and movies, like music, have a magical way of transporting us back to simpler times.

I’ve been an avid fan and supporter of Chris’ efforts since discovering his work a few years back. This website was a sponsor of his last film, Weresquito Nazi Hunter and I’m thrilled to be executive producing DEMON. Chris and I are working hard on new ways to get his films distributed and hope to announcing some exciting new directions for the films of the Mihmiverse shortly.

About DEMON WITH THE ATOMIC BRAIN

A failed attempt to weaponize a machine capable of opening portals to other worlds creates an exponentially expanding bubble of fractured space-time which threatens to engulf the entire universe! An elite team of specialists must enter a “crack” in the disturbance and make their way down a rabbit hole of increasingly more dangerous alternate realities to find and shut down the machine which created it! Will their last ditch attempt to save humanity be successful? Will this be how the universe ends? Find out in writer/director Christopher R. Mihm’s exciting homage to the sci-fi adventure films of the late 1950s: “Demon with the Atomic Brain!”

Join us for the world premiere of “Demon with the Atomic Brain!”

But first, it’s premiere time with the world premiere scheduled for Wednesday October 4, 2017 at the classic Heights Theater in Columbia Heights, Minnesota followed by a special showing on October 8 at the Alamo Draft House in Dallas, Texas.

In addition to the main attraction, attendees will enjoy a program complete with hand-picked, era-appropriate newsreels, classic trailers, appearances by most (if not all) of the cast and crew, autographs, photo opportunities with creatures from the film and a silent auction! DVDs, posters and other exclusive merchandise will also be on sale!

Just like those Saturday afternoon creature features I grew up watching, Mihm’s films are family fare and, while occasionally scary, they are intentionally crafted to be viewable for all ages, so bring the whole family!

Things Get Sticky as Host Derek M Koch and I Discuss 1958’s THE BLOB!

What’s your favorite monster movie?

If you’re like me, you probably can’t name just one so you have qualifiers…your favorite Universal monster movie, your favorite giant monster movie, your favorite man-in-suit monster movie, and on and on. While I’d be hard pressed to name any one all-time favorite monster movie, I have a pretty clear sense of my top 10…or maybe 20…and the 1958 film The Blob is definitely in that list!

That’s why it was so much fun to be a guest on my favorite film podcast this summer talking about one of my favorite classic monster movies with host Derek M. Koch. I listen to a lot of podcasts and Derek’s Monster Kid Radio is consistently one of the best produced and most entertaining in my feed. Each week, Derek and a guest discuss a favorite monster movie; favorite classic actor, actress, or director; or a topic relevant to monster kids of all ages. Framed by mostly-spooky surf music, every episode of Monster Kid Radio is your weekly escape to the monster kid culture and a must-listen to fans of classic, and not-so-classic, genre movies of yesterday.

There’s a lot to talk about regarding The Blob, so much so that Derek and I can’t cover it ourselves! So to fill in some more blob blanks, Derek takes listeners back to Monster Bash for a recording from the Q&A session with Kris Yeaworth, the son of the film’s director.

You can listen to the episode on the Monster Kid Radio website or subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. With 335 episodes and counting, I highly encourage all you Monster Kids to subscribe to Derek’s podcast and dig into the catalog of back episodes. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed! Also, you can connect with the MKR community on the podcast’s Facebook Page and Facebook Group.

So check out Episode 331 of Monster Kid Radio and let me know what you think? Do I have a future as a podcaster, or should I stick to blogging? My friends always say I have a face for radio!

My First Monster Movie Begins A Lifelong Love Affair

It was the summer of 1970. Or maybe it was 1971. I was 4, maybe 5, years old. My little brother had just been born and my mom, like all parents of newborns with school-age siblings, was looking for anything and everything to get me out of the house and out of her hair. Enter summer movies at the public library and my first exposure to monster movies. Not just any monster movie, mind you. That was the summer I first saw King Kong.

My Origin Story

Now for a pre-schooler with a mad love for dinosaurs, this movie had me hooked from the start — adventure on a lost island full of prehistoric beasts. Throw a giant ape into the mix and have him fight the dinos and I was a goner! I can’t recall the other movies I saw that summer, which leads me to believe they were not monster movies. I’m sure I enjoyed them, but King Kong sticks in my memory like it was last week. It was exciting, full of adventure- and dinosaurs. It was a bit scary at times but it was also sad. Like every other kid, I felt bad for Kong and knew from the start he wasn’t really the bad guy. he was scared and probably home-sick. The bad guys were the men who captured him and exploited him to get rich. As a kid, adults control your world–parent, teachers, babysitters…and you can relate to getting in trouble because you’re out of your comfort zone, for not fitting in, for being scared and feeling alone.

For me, Kong was personal. I understood the plight of the monster. It was the first, but certainly not the last, time that I found myself rooting for the ‘monster’ and being sad when he, inevitably, would lose.

From Dinosaurs to Classic Monsters

I don’t know if that was the same day I discovered that they wrote books about movie monsters, but it wasn’t long after seeing Kong on the tiny library television that I was scouring the library for any and everything I could find about the monsters of the movies. And the 1970s were a time when kids books about classic movie monsters were plentiful.

Meeting the Classic Monsters

By the time school started that fall, I was well versed in the classics of Frankenstein, Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Godzilla and the Wolf Man. In some cases, seeing these movies was still years away, but I checked those books out over and over again that summer–reading and re-reading the movie synopsis and memorizing every frightful picture. That was the summer I became a Monster Kid.

I’m sure my story isn’t unique for kids of the early ’70s or for generations before me. My wife remembers seeing King Kong at her local library as well. It must have been pretty common fare in those pre-Star Wars days of the early 1970s. For most kids it is a fond childhood memory. For monster kids, it changed everything and started us down the path of a lifelong love for fantastic creatures and worlds of the imagination. The public library was the gateway, but King Kong was the drug.

What is your Monster Kid origin story? How did King Kong effect you and when did you first see this iconic film?